


Oneshot: The Play of Light

by 0_Ruthless_0



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0_Ruthless_0/pseuds/0_Ruthless_0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone browses paintings while thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oneshot: The Play of Light

#  The Play of Light

  
  


I slipped in through the doors to the art gallery, quiet, trying not to draw any unwanted attention to myself. It had been a while since I’d last been here, but when I’d heard what the exhibition of works they were going to be shown there was, I had to come and have a look. It had been a long time since I’d last seen any of his work, and although my opinion may have been biased in the past, from what I remembered of it, he had been a bloody good artist. 

Hell, a good artist – I’d have once compared him to a god, with the way that he could paint and draw…

The name of this particular lot was _The Play of Light and Shadow_ – a touch cliché, perhaps, but still fitting.

The first work that caught my eye was of an angle, with a head half-turned. It would have been the kind of thing that _he’d_ have usually scoffed at, if not for the way that it had been done. I drew to a slow halt in front of it, and pulled back a couple of steps, so that I could really see what I was looking at.

What could be seen of its face was twisted into a savage expression. Its eyes glittered with a black rage, and it seemed to hold itself with more than a little hint of malice. It’s wings were a mixture of mottled black and grey, mostly, although in the few tiny spots that were still white, they were stained with blood, some of it fresh, and some dried to a dark ugly brown.

Its eyes were green, it’s hair blond – neither of which came as any surprise – and its hands were tipped with claws, again stained with blood. And the shadows that were around it, and falling across it, seemed more solid than they should have been.

If I looked closely enough, then I was sure that I could make out features in them, and old, worn looking clawed fingers seemed to be reaching towards it.

It was a good half-hour before I could tear myself away from my study of it, and over to another one.

This one showed a bed, with a sleeper lying in it, facing away from the artist, one hand tucked under his head, only a corner of sheet covering his arse. A harsh yellow glow flooded in through the uncovered window, casting the shadow of raindrops over everything. An ash-tray, filled to overflowing sat on top of the bed-side table, and a half-fill bottle of whiskey was mostly under the bed. Again, around the edges of the room, the too solid shadows were drawing closer.

The third work that caught my attention was life-sized, and over in the far corner. It showed a relatively young-looking man standing in a bathroom, one sleeve rolled up, and the other still down, inches away from the mirror before him. 

The arm with the rolled-back  sleeve had a leather belt cinched tightly around it, to act as a tourniquet, the free hand gripped at the edge of a battered, stained porcelain sink, and a half-depressed syringe was half-hidden from view. His head was tiled back to meet the gaze of his own reflection, and the glass was fogged up to the point just below his eyes. In the reflected eyes, I could see pain, savagery, and fear, and, as in all the other works, those infernal sharp-clawed shadows.

It was a blow to the system. I knew that the subject was me, but to see myself from his perspective…

Quietly, I turned my gaze to the artists signature – _E.D. Rayne,_ and the date that was on it. _2008._

I’d heard that he was dead, but if he was still painting his pictures, then he can’t have been. If he was still writing his foolish letters, inviting me to meet him at such and a place, and I was even more foolishly responding, then he must have still been around.

Somewhere. 

Somehow.

He stung me like the fucking viper that he was every single time we came into contact with one another, and yet there was still a part of me that had never been able to resign itself to the fact that anything which had ever been between Ethan Rayne and myself was over, and had been so for years.

Every time he called me out, I still got a feeling of half-nervous, half-sick anticipation in the pit of my stomach, no better than a bloody blushing school-boy. 

But in spite of myself, and in spite of him, and in spite of my better instincts which were screaming at me to run, and never look back, I still wanted him. 

Wanted to see him again. 

Wanted to know him again.

Or at least, I wanted a chance to.

He’d said he would be here, and, even though he had no _real_ reason to be, I believed that he would be.

And the truth was that I was looking forward to it, too.

  
  



End file.
